When to appeal a parking ticket

You should appeal to have your parking ticket cancelled if one of the reasons on this page applies to you. The reasons are laid out as headings below.

It’s free to appeal by contacting whoever gave you the parking ticket, so it’s well worth trying, especially if you have evidence to prove your case. You can’t be taken to court for non-payment while you’re appealing. You may be taken to court if your appeal is unsuccessful and you don’t pay the parking ticket .

Don’t appeal or pay a ticket from a parking company that’s not an Accredited Trade Association (ATA) member. As they are not an approved firm, they cannot get your details from the DVLA.

Look on the British Parking Association (BPA) or International Parking Community (IPC) websites to check if a parking company is an ATA member. You can also call the BPA on 01444 447 300 to check if a company is an ATA member. Calls to this number can cost up to 12p a minute from a landline, or between 8p and 40p a minute from a mobile (your phone supplier can tell you how much you’ll pay).

If you get a ticket in the post from a non-ATA member, report them to Action Fraud because the company could have got your details illegally.

You were parked correctly

You can appeal a ticket if you think you were parked correctly. For example, if a parking attendant thinks you stayed too long when you were in fact within the time limit.

By law, a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) from the local authority – issued on public land, such as a high street – must be cancelled if you didn’t break the parking rules. You can check these rules on GOV.UK or on signs near where you parked.

When you park on private land, such as a supermarket car park, the terms and conditions of using the car park should be made clear on nearby signs. If you are given a Parking Charge Notice, the burden of proof is on the parking company to show that you didn’t stick to their terms and conditions.

If you were parked correctly, you may wish to appeal and supply evidence to prove this.

There was no way to pay

Your ticket should be cancelled if a parking meter or machine was broken and there was no other way to pay. Your appeal is likely to be unsuccessful if there was another machine you could have used.

If a parking meter or machine has not been updated for the new £1 coin you may use this as your reason for appealing the ticket. However if the meter or machine takes other denominations of coins to pay for your ticket or there was a phone number to use to pay this may affect your success in making the appeal.

You were charged too much

If you get a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN), which is a parking ticket issued by the local authority, the amount you’re charged will fall into a higher or lower band. You’ll be charged the higher band for a more serious offence, like parking on a double yellow line. The lower band is for something less serious, like parking for longer than your ticket allows.

You should appeal if you’ve been charged too much for a PCN. For example if your offence should be in the lower band but you’ve been charged the higher band amount. You can find out how much a local authority charges for each band. For contact details of local authorities, see the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) website.

If you’ve been given a Parking Charge Notice, the BPN and IPC rules state you shouldn’t be charged more than £100 – unless the parking company can prove your parking offence made them lose this additional money. You should appeal if you’ve been charged more than £100 and think this extra cost is unjustified.

Charges following the ParkingEye Limited vs Beavis case

Parking companies sometimes use this case – where the judge ruled that an £85 parking charge was OK – as a reason to charge more than is reasonable.

Even after the ParkingEye vs Beavis ruling, a parking company can’t charge whatever they want. Your client should appeal if the charge is more than £100 – unless the company can clearly justify the reasons for this high charge.

You were only just out of time

It’s worth appealing if you were only 5 or 10 minutes late.

You should be given a few minutes after your parking runs out – called a ‘grace period’. ATA members should give you an extra 10 minutes before giving you a Parking Charge Notice – as should the local authority before giving you a Penalty Charge Notice. You should also be given a reasonable amount of time to leave a car park if you decide not to park.

A parking company might disagree with your appeal if they time your stay from the moment you entered the car park, rather than from when you parked. It’s still worth appealing because it’s free to informally appeal – and you have to do this before you can appeal to an independent tribunal or trade association.